Chapter
5
My Life at Cosanti: 1978 to
1984
Arrival
It’s a long drive from Arcosanti to Cosanti in Paradise
Valley; by the time we got there, it was early evening; everything was quiet.
We (I was with a guy who also wanted to work at Cosanti) walked up through the
Tunnel into the South Apse Courtyard to the Cat Cast House north entrance,
knocked on the door and entered the house. W were greeted by Dave Adams,
foreman of the Cosanti Foundry, who was down in the sunken Pit watching an old
TV. Dave stood up to talk to us while the guy and I stood on the bridge near
the front door, said he’d heard we were coming down from Arcosanti to work at
Cosanti.
In the Antioch courtyard, the Cosanti denizens who greeted us
told us that all the living spaces at Cosanti were taken. These included the
“Pipes” at the north and south ends of the East Barrel Vault—those are concrete
sewer pipe connectors, eight feet in diameter, installed in the telephone pole
sections that structure the glassed-in ends of the Barrel Vaults. The other
living spaces at Cosanti, besides Paolo and Colly’s house and Luciano and Maria
Soleri’s (Paolo’s younger brother and his wife) trailer were the Cat Cast House
where four foundry workers lived; the Earth House, which Ivan Pintar shared
with Mary Hoadley and Roger Tomalty on weekends; plus a room in the south end
of the Antioch building that was occupied by Michael McCleve. They added that
the next day, someone was supposed to move out of one of the “Pipes,” so if I
could camp out in the Antioch Kitchen that night, the next day I could move
into the north Pipe. I was woken at dawn by foundry workers coming into the
kitchen to clock-in for work at the time clock, get some coffee, etc. Someone
did move out of the north Pipe that morning, so I was able to move into that
space the day after Thanksgiving, 1978.
They asked me did I want to work that day. It had been raining
and it was, after all, the day after Thanksgiving; after brief attempts at
work, the foundry crew took the day off. But
people who worked indoors in the offices kept to their tasks. I said I
wanted to work; I wanted to get right to it. Some foundry crew people took me
into the back end of the foundry in the Metal Studio and gave me an old
shopping cart that was full of clean, un-ground bell castings. My task was to
grind and buff them with an electric grinding and buffing wheel. I stood at the
grinder wearing leather work-gloves, a face-shield, ear protectors, and an old
long-sleeve shirt over my sweater to protect myself from the grindings. I was
shown how to use the grinding wheel to cut off the sprue, the top of the
casting that’s left in place from the funnel cut into the sand mold into which
molten bronze was poured, and how to buff the edges of the bell casting on the
grinder’s steel brush wheel. I got the hang of it and once I got started, I
kept at it. It was exhausting work, and standing on my feet all day at the
grinding wheel was hard. While I was grinding, I got a noise complaint from the
busy bell sales area in the North Apse, but in that one day, my first day in
the foundry at Cosanti, I ground off the entire shopping cart full of all the
bell castings..
Cosanti Foundry Work
Gradually, I adapted to the hard work in the Cosanti art
foundry. I learned how to shovel molding sand into a cutting machine that, with
water from a hose, would restore the sand that had been used to pour from a
chunky texture into the nice, fluffy consistency needed for the next hour’s or
day’s use. You couldn’t just throw sand into the machine randomly; rather, you
toss a shovel full of sand, as one chunk, into the machine. I was also shown
how to assemble the Soleri windbells into finished products. (The copper wire
used in assembling the bells is actually recycled telephone cable.) Eventually,
I was allowed to learn to mold the bells.
That autumn of 1978 was a long autumn. I’d traveled from
Yellowstone where it was fall in September, to an October/November fall at
Arcosanti, to a late November fall in the Valley of the Sun.
There were several departments and many people working at
Cosanti that fall In addition to the foundry and Metal Studio, the office and
drafting room, the shipping department and the silk screen studio in the
Antioch building, all the people working there were busy. I quickly made
friends around the Cosanti compound—in the shipping department; with my fellow
crew members in the foundry and Metal Studio; with Michael McCleve the
legendary metal sculptor, Andy McPherson, an architect, who at that time worked
in the silk screen studio, making Soleri Bridge prints. Someone moved out of
the south Pipe; I moved in there, where it was quieter and more shaded as it
faces the north courtyard of the Earth House, and I stayed there through
mid-December. Then Dave, who’d occupied the south bunk room in the Cat Cast
House, moved to a small house in an undeveloped area of central Scottsdale.
Someone moved into Dave’s old room, so I was able to move into the middle room
in the Cat Cast House. When Christmas arrived, I got permission to travel to
Cincinnati for two weeks, to go visit my parents.
When I returned to Cosanti in late December, 1978, I began
working in the Cosanti art foundry in earnest. Since that first day grinding
bell castings, I had resolved to work hard, to do my best. I was afraid of
being fired but people were impressed with my hard work.
Most of the other guys who had lived in the Cat Cast House
moved out at about the same time. I hadn’t known them very well but they left a
mess. The interior window walls of the Cat Cast House were covered with old
orange military surplus parachutes, to keep the tourists from peeking in. Some
of the pervious occupants had played soccer in the concrete house and one of
the windows was irreplaceably broken. One of the guys who was leaving said he
had moved to Cosanti from Arcosanti “to get closer to Paolo.” But in fact,
Paolo is a very private and shy man and Arcosanti is where he actually engages
the community, so he didn’t want anything to do with this guy at Cosanti. The
guy left in a huff, calling Paolo a name. Since the previous occupants were
gone, those of us left had to figure things out for ourselves—including, for
example, the placement and function of light switches.
The Cat Cast House is made of earth-cast concrete. The entire
south and south-eastern face of the house is glass with intricate wood frames.
There are two Tree Wells, on either side of the center of the interior, which
are concrete at the base and top, with wood and glass enclosures in between,
extending floor to ceiling; green Palo Verde trees grow in them, spreading
their branches out over the roof to shade it (making a mess on the roof with
their leaves). The house is built on two levels: kitchen, dining area and bunk
room level surround a deeply sunken living room (“the Pit”). Steps made of
reinforced railroad ties lead down into the Pit and a concrete ladder is cast
into its east wall. Openings for shelves are also cast into the concrete walls
of the Pit; the north end leads to a bunk room under the entrance to the house.
There is an arched earth-cast concrete bridge over the Pit near the north
windows, with an inscription in Japanese written in the earth-cast concrete
facing into the north window. I was told that the gist of this inscription is:
“He who works hard, learns well.”
In the early 1950’s, Paolo and Colly Soleri bought five acres
set in the Sonoran desert of the Valley of the Sun in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
A small house (more like a shack) that was, the story goes, built and occupied
by an artist, before the Soleri’s arrived, sits on the property. Dr. and Mrs.
Soleri occupied that house the entire time they were at that site. To the
southwest of Cosanti is Mummy Mountain, so-called for its resemblance to the
profile of a reclining Egyptian mummy.
Soleri began building at the Cosanti site in the late 1950s.
His first construction was an earth-cast concrete, earth-sheltered home, called
the Earth House; followed by an unusual split-level drafting studio that
adjoins a sheltered, below-grade outdoor Ceramics Studio. An exhibition hall
and studio, called the North Studio, was built in 1961 (it’s now known as
Cosanti’s Gallery). An outdoor studio in the form of a quarter sphere (it’s
facing north instead of south) called the North Apse was built in 1964, the
year in which Dr. Soleri and his wife, Colly, established the non-profit
Cosanti Foundation. The Foundation made it possible for Soleri to link with
Arizona State University and hold a series of workshops at Cosanti for
students. Workshop students assisted Dr. Soleri with further construction of
the Cosanti compound. All the concrete structures at Cosanti were workshop
experiments in various kinds of concrete casting, especially earth-casting.
The Town of Paradise Valley was incorporated on May 24, 1961;
five years after paolo and Colly Soleri settled there and began developing the
Cosanti compound. Although the town of Paradise Valley does not allow business
or industrial activity within its borders, Cosanti is “grandfathered-in”
because it was there before the town was incorporated.
A number of unusual concrete structures were built at the
Cosanti site between 1956 and 1974: studios, offices, workshops and performance
facilities. The Foundry Apse, an apse-sheltered courtyard adjoining the Cat
Cast House, a drafting room , a model-building studio called the Pumpkin Apse,
and the Barrel Vaults were constructed 1965 through 1970. The Antioch Building,
a mixed-use, earth-cast, below grade structure, was built with the
participation of students from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
The buildings and structures at Cosanti – as well as at
Arcosanti, are largely built with the help-efforts of volunteer/amateur labor.
People from around the world come to participate in the Workshop program,
paying tuition fees that cover tools, materials, food and shelter in minimal
housing, plus insurance for five or six weeks. Workshop participants finance
the project as well as construct it.
Cosanti in the early 1980s was a small community, with up to a
dozen people living on the premises, another dozen or so working there during
the week. I enjoyed settling into Cosanti, especially because it is located in
the suburbs, unlike Arcosanti, which is out in the middle of nowhere. At
Cosanti, there was radio and TV to receive, grocery stores to go to where we
could choose our own food. I was told that Cosanti was unlike Arcosanti, in
that we would not have as much contact with Paolo as we would at Arcosanti;
that was fine with me. I didn’t have any transportation at first, but I could
get a ride with Mike McCleve, up to the corner of Shea and Scottsdale roads,
for groceries.
Back in the Metal Studio, after assembling for several months,
I was invited into the foundry proper to begin to learn to mold the bells. I
started out on the smallest bell molds, for the #134 and #135 bells (Soleri
windbells are numbered for identification). I got to be something of a
specialist with these smaller bell molds, much of my time in the Cosanti art
foundry, because the larger sand molds were hard for me to handle. For a while
I did mold the #111 bells, both decorated and plain. One of the creative
aspects in making the Soleri windbells is to impress the interior of the sand
mold so that unique decorations appear on the exterior of each finished bell.
But there was a special order for hundreds of plain #111 bells, and I was
assigned the molding of those bells, so I had to muscle dozens of heavy sand
molds onto the floor of the foundry without the pleasure of decorating any of
the bell molds creatively.
Eventually, I was allowed to try my hand at molding the
cylindrical #104’s, then to mold the 106’s and tall 110’s; I also loose-molded
those bells. Loose-molding requires separate aluminum bell patterns, unattached
from each other. I tried to mold the larger #118 bells, which had to be molded
on wooden horses, but these were too heavy for me to handle.
The atmosphere among the workers at Cosanti was competitive.
People raced each other to see who could use up the pile of molding sand first.
There were even status symbols among the workers—a new pair of leather work
gloves or a new pair of assembly pliers were coveted among the metal studio and
foundry workers. We were not always nice to one another. Frequently, critical
and even mean-spirited remarks and attitudes would be exchanged. But in
general, we were friends and got along OK.
Cat Cast House
Life in the Cat Cast House with three housemates was pleasant.
I had moved into the best room at the south end of the house, with Fresnel
lenses as circular south-facing windows. When I first moved into that south
bunk room, there was, outside of it, a widening of the hallway that was used as
a sitting area. The room contained a small iron pot-belly wood burning stove,
its chimney projecting out the east window. It was cold that winter, with
temperatures down to eighteen degrees Fahrenheit. In the morning, you could see
your breath inside the unheated house. I tried using the pot-belly stove for
heat but it was dirty and didn’t give off a lot of heat. After a few months, I
took it out and gave it to Arcosanti, where I was sure they could make use of
it in Camp.
For a while, we had a close-knit group living in the Cat Cast
House. We wanted to clean it, and fix it up. We painted it, and hung bells in
the Tree Wells. The old multi-colored pyramidal skylights at the north
entranceway were deteriorating so Steve Boland, who lived in the room below,
asked Ivan to make new, flat, white skylight covers; they were elegant. The Cat
Cast had had many previous occupants who had left stuff for the use of future
occupants. This included utensils and cookbooks in the kitchen, as well as a
large round photo of the Arcosanti Foundry on the kitchen’s north wall. In the
Pit was a large iron pot-belly stove for heat, along with old books and
architecture magazines, and an old TV. In 1982, we got cable TV in the Cat Cast
House and abandoned the old TV in the Pit for new ones in our rooms. This cut
down on our socializing.
That went on for a couple of years at Cosanti, cleaning,
painting and fixing up the Cat Cast House. Since we were into making
improvements, Mary told us we would not be charged the Co-Use Fee for living on
the premises. The Co-Use Fee is what is paid at Cosanti and Arcosanti in lieu
of “rent.” It is supposed to pay for electricity, water and use of shared
facilities. At Arcosanti in the 1990s, this was around $110 per month, deducted
from your bi-weekly paycheck. But after a couple of years, we had accomplished
all the improvements we had set out to do in the Cat Cast House. And frankly,
partying began to take up more of out time.
In the summer of 1981, Colly asked me to help with watering
around the compound. She gave me a map of Cosanti with my area of
responsibility marked out, which was the Cat Cast back yard. I was also
responsible, on a weekly basis under Ivan Pintar’s supervision, for cleaning
and maintaining the Cosanti swimming pool. This was important as Paolo swims
laps, every day at noon at Cosanti and at Arcosanti.
Living and working at Cosanti could become your whole world.
At first, I only left the compound to go grocery shopping once a week. Still,
the social scene at Cosanti was very limited, and this applied not only to us
foundry workers, but to other Cosanti denizens as well. Ivan had friends
outside of Cosanti, as did the Soleri family, but he and they kept to
themselves. But for us, there usually were only the other guys in the Cat Cast
House and hard-drinking McCleve to relate to. This is why Steve Hutton
hitch-hiked up to Arcosanti every weekend; he even had a girlfriend up there.
There were off-site workers to visit at Cosanti, and there were frequently
attractive young woman in the Gallery and bell sales area but it seemed that my
house mate, the late Dave Koppe, got all the women. After a while, the close
quarters began to get to me.
I found myself crying at the end of the workday; the Cosanti
social stresses were really getting to me. So I sought out counseling in
Scottsdale, and that did help me to deal with the difficult personalities at
Cosanti. On the strength of an IQ test given me by the psychologist, I joined
Mensa, the high IQ society. I could go to Mensa salons, gatherings and meetings
where I could find new and interesting people to talk with. In May, 1982, I
went with a few other Mensa people to San Diego for a Mensa Regional Gathering
(RG). That weekend was one of the best times of my life. The Greater Phoenix
Mensa people I met were friendly for the most part but skeptical of my
involvement with Paolo Soleri and Cosanti. They called me a “flake” because of
it. I endeavored to get them interested but their reaction was mostly, “So
what!”
To develop a life outside of Cosanti and move my life forward,
I decided to start graduate school at Arizona State University, fifteen miles
south in Tempe. I rode my new Yamaha motorcycle to ASU, majored in
Environmental Planning in the College of Architecture’s new Planning
Department. My first Semester there, I carried a full academic load while I
worked in the Cosanti Foundry full-time. This was very difficult, emotionally
wrenching and physically draining. But at the end of my first Semester, my name
was on the Dean’s list! Colly rewarded me with a bag of mint chocolates from
her favorite candy shop, See’s Candy in Scottsdale.
For a couple of years at Cosanti, I felt I had it made. I
could work in the Cosanti Foundry and Metal Studio full-time and attend
graduate school at ASU part-time. I could live in Soleri’s architecture and
walk a short distance to work. I had a Yamaha motorcycle for transportation. I worked
every weekday, went to school in the afternoon and evening. We were located in
a nice suburb of Phoenix. I had cable TV and a stereo in my room with an
electric typewriter and a waterbed. And all the pot I liked. It was an
exciting, comfortable life. For a short while, anyway.
Character sketch:
McCleve
Michael McCleve was one of the long-time Cosanti residents and
Metal Studio workers. He was quite a character. Colly called him “McClever.” He
had basically grown up at Cosanti. Mike had lost two or three front teeth; he’d
had them replaced with turquoise pieces, which gave him an unusual smile. he
was known in the local Scottsdale art scene for his fantastic metal sculptures
and made a name for himself with them. He took found pieces of scrap metal, arranged
them into three-dimensional free-standing sculptures. Then he welded the pieces
together, ground off the weld marks and paint the piece so as to turn it into
one integral sculpture. Mike’s sculptures were scattered around the Cosanti
grounds; he also has pieces in the permanent collection of the Heard Museum in
Phoenix.
But I found out soon after meeting Michael McCleve that he
also was, unfortunately, an alcoholic. He drank primarily at night; during the
day he worked reasonably hard, liked to tell gross jokes just to freak people
out. Once, during preparations for the annual Cosanti Christmas Party, he
poured Everclear alcohol into the punch without telling anyone. The usually
demure bookkeepers became tipsy!
Michael worked on molding and assembling the largest Soleri
windbells, the #124 and #122. He also assembled hanging mobiles of Paolo’s
sculptural aluminum linkages with bronze bells; these are called Special
Assemblies. It took an artist’s eye to match up the loose aluminum links and
the large variety of Soleri bells available. Mike also claimed to be the
“quality control” man, overseeing the quality of the Cosanti art foundry’s
products. Obviously, Paolo had the major hand in this; but McCleve and
occasionally Paolo would critique the decorations appearing on the castings.
Paolo also supervised McCleve’s work on the Special Assemblies. I liked and
admired Michael McCleve—he was a nice, funny, talented man.
Only a couple of months into my employment with Cosanti
Originals, I learned from Mike about patina-ing (coloring) assembled bells for
the final presentation. Assembled Soleri windbells are layered into an old milk
crate and then dipped into a vat of muriatic acid. This the same sort of acid
is used in swimming pool chemistry, to control the pH of the water. The acid
reacts with the bronze bells, when removed from the acid, the bells are
initially pale in color.
After exposure to the acid, the surface of the bells is
light-sensitive. Spraying the acid off the bells with water from a hose
instigates a patina (a form of rust) on the surface of the bell. Sunshine or
darkness evokes slight variations in the patinas on the bells. There are some
tricks used to evoke various patinas on bronze Soleri bells, including covering
the bell pile with burlap which is then hosed down with water. I got interested
in this process and specialized in patina-ing the bells, timing them and
getting it down to a science. I got to be so good at it that Ivan Pintar,
Cosanti manager and official photographer, had me patina a special #124 bell
for a picture on the cover of the Cosanti Originals catalog.
Cosanti Construction
Work
Many of the Cosanti art foundry workers were
jacks-of-all-trades and were called upon to do maintenance work: fix
evaporative coolers, do landscaping and grounds-keeping, or even construction
work. When Ivan wanted to build a new outdoor special assembly studio on the
west side of the Antioch courtyard, we dug out the hill there, prepared the
ground for a concrete pour. Then we inserted old railroad ties vertically in a
row, to form a wall against the hill. Two old telephone poles were erected to
hold a canvas sunshade over the studio. Mike cut some steel with a welding
torch to make work tables for the studio. This entire operation took a couple
of weeks to complete. Our bosses let us know we were appreciated: once, while
we were working at grounds-keeping in the front yard of Cosanti, Ivan brought
us cold Cokes to help us with our work.
Several months after the outdoor studio was built, some of us
worked at installing a new, large Bell Tree at Cosanti’s entrance to display
Paolo’s special assemblies, made in the outdoor studio. This required pouring
concrete pavement at the entryway—wood forms had to be laid down. An old
telephone pole was carried from the east loading dock and erected to form the
trunk of the Bell Tree, but first, a footing for the telephone pole had to be
dug. I was assigned to dig the hole. Ivan had me start dig first thing in the
morning. He began the hole for me so I would know where and how to dig. I was
to pound the bottom of the hole with a long straight steel crowbar, then scoop
dirt from the bottom of the hole with a large shovel angled like a scoop. Ivan
– who had a very odd sense of humor, said he was disappointed that I didn’t
have any trouble digging through the Caliches layer of the ground. I threw the
dirt into a wheelbarrow and when the wheelbarrow was full, I had to push it up
and down the steps leading into the Antioch courtyard on wooden ramps, across
to the side of the hill behind the studio, up the hill and finally dump the
dirt behind the railroad tie retaining wall. This was very strenuous work—I
figured I was getting into shape. As I was digging that morning, Colly came out
of the office and photographed me digging in the hole. Then, visitors were
walking by as I dug; they watched me work and one senior citizen asked if he
could try digging. I said, “Sure!” Paolo noticed this little exchange, ran up
and exclaimed, “Sign him up!” I dug, with a lunch break, until quitting time in
the afternoon. That afternoon, a part-time off-site worker came in and dug the
remainder of the hole.
Special Assemblies
I was able to branch out from strictly foundry work into the
new outdoor Metal Studio in the Antioch Courtyard. There, I was shown how to
assemble the very large #124 and #122 bells; and also to make the #310 bell
assembly. This is a standard piece included in the Cosanti Originals catalog.
It is a #118 bell hung from an aluminum linkage cast from a standard pattern
designed by Paolo. I believe the original design came out of the work done
during the 1960s. After the link is cast, ground and drilled, a thin mixture of
black paint and turpentine has to be painted on the link so it won’t be so
shiny. It takes awhile to do and the paint/turpentine mixture is tricky to get
right. I wound up having to go over the link with steel wool to take away some
of the paint. Foundry foreman Bob Call thought I took too long to complete the
#310 assembly and assigned it to someone else.
Later, I attempted to make some small special assemblies of
bells. I began by welding some ‘F’ links (“Fan links”) together into hangers
(with brass chain) for an assembly of #134 and #135 bells hung in tiers. Mike
had the suggestion of re-arranging the bells so they balanced better visually.
Then afterwards I considered some old aluminum castings hanging from the
railroad tie walls of the outdoor studio. A couple of them were small aluminum
omegas. I asked McCleve why they had never been used and he said that no one
could figure out a way to make them into an assembly that looked good. But I
had an idea.
I made a wire hanger by threading a piece of heavy copper wire
through the aluminum piece and then wrapped it with thin copper wire. I hung a
faceted #106 bell from it McCleve praised the assembly and they hung it in the
Cosanti Gallery for sale. A few days later it sold! So I used the second
aluminum omega to make another special assembly just like the first one. Colly
met me at the steps to the Antioch courtyard one day and asked me about the
assemblies I had made. She asked me to tell her if I made any more. I thought I
was in trouble but apparently she liked the pieces and wanted to keep one for
the Soleri Archives.
Character Sketch:
Paolo’s Anger
Sometimes the administration of the Cosanti Foundation gets so
wrapped up in micro-managing details that those in charge lose sight of the Big
Picture. The following is an experience I had with Paolo in the early 1980’s at
Cosanti.
One afternoon in the Cosanti Foundry, an employee who was
sweeping up after work swept of some bronze fragments from the floor along with
sand and threw them into the trash can. Later that afternoon, Paolo and McCleve
came by and they spotted the bronze fragments in the trash can. Paolo was angry
about this because this was a flagrantly careless waste of resources! As the
entire foundry work force had gone home for the day, they decided to deal with
the issue the next morning.
The next morning, I came into the Metal Studio and, as I
usually did, went to empty the trash can into the dumpster up near the loading
dock. When Paolo and McCleve came into the studio, looking for the bronze
fragments in the trash, they were gone! Paolo called all the workers together
in the Antioch Courtyard behind the Foundry Apse. He demanded to know who had
thrown the bronze fragments into the trash in the first place, said that
whoever had done this would be immediately fired! No one spoke up. Then he
demanded to know who had emptied the trash can of the bronze fragments. When I
raised my hand, the rest of the foundry workers looked at me like I was crazy.
Paolo ordered me to go up to the dumpster and look for the
bronze fragments in the trash. I went up and climbed into the dumpster to look
for the bronze fragments. Just then Steve Frerichs, who had come in late, saw
me in there, and said, “What, are we throwing away Scott, now?” I did manage to
find a few of the bronze fragments, and when Paolo walked up, I showed him the
pieces I had found. He said there had been a big chunk which I had neglected to
find. I offered to look again, but he said No and walked away with a worried
expression on his face.
Tours
In the early days of my Cosanti life, I was asked to give
tours of the Cosanti compound. Cosanti has a constant stream of visitors,
including large groups of tourists who regularly descended upon Cosanti from
tour buses. Architects Jeff Stein and Andy McPherson were the regular tour
guides for Cosanti; Michael McCleve occasionally gave tours to groups
interested in art.
Bus tours led by Gray Line Tours brought in large groups of
well-dressed women whose husbands were in town for conventions. Those tour
groups traveled to various places in and around Scottsdale, including Taliesin
West and Cosanti. We sometimes got entire convention groups, such as Sweet
Adelines, International Toastmasters and IBM. School groups from the third
grade and up would also visit Cosanti.
I began learning to give tours of Cosanti by going along on
tours hosted by Jeff or Andy. They each had different styles, Jeff’s was
intellectual, Andy’s down-to-earth. After I’d observed a few tours, I wrote an
outline for my tour and presented it to the office staff; they were impressed.
I started giving tours by myself. Tours began at the Cosanti Gallery in the
North Studio where, in addition to explaining how the building was earth-cast
in place, I pointed out the arcology models on display and explain them. After
listening in on some of my tours, Ivan asked me to de-emphasize the arcology
talk and concentrate on the bells. We wanted to sell lots of bells to these
people.
Eventually, I became chief tour guide at Cosanti. A full tour
lasted around 45 minutes. We would stop at the Ceramics Studio, and the Foundry
Apse, where I explained the casting of the bells, including showing Paolo’s
Styrofoam carvings that linkages were cast from. Tours walked the compound, to
the Pumpkin Apse where the 1967 “3-D Jersey” early arcology model sat. We would
traverse the brick pathway to the back yard of the Cat Cast House, then go up
to the swimming pool deck with its twenty-nine ton silt-cast concrete Canopy
standing on twelve telephone poles. During the work week, tours paid clock time
plus $5. Weekend tours paid $5 plus $.50 a head.
It is necessary to open the Gallery and bell-sales areas on
the weekend at Cosanti. So to provide an incentive for staffing the bells-sales
areas on weekends, Cosanti Originals paid 10% of total bell sales for the day
to staff on duty. If less than $100 worth of bells was sold that day, then
minimum wage was paid to the staff on duty. On a good weekend day, you could
make almost $100 for the day, very good money for working for Cosanti
Originals. There was always a waiting list of those who wanted to sell bells on
Saturday or Sunday. The 10% offer stood until the mid-1980s, when bell sales
traffic increased so much that bell sales staff was making almost $400 for the
day! Paolo thought this was too much and decreased the salesperson’s percentage
to 5%.
Archives
My obsession with Cosanti and Arcosanti led me to develop my
own “archive” of Soleri-related articles, brochures and posters. I began to
fill two file boxes with these materials, which I carefully stored in them. I
had a signed Soleri bridge print, stored in a cardboard tube. At Arcosanti, in
the 1990s, I later filled two large binders with Arcosanti-related materials
like posters and graphics produced for various community-related events. When I
left Arcosanti in 2000, my entire collection went into the official Soleri
Archive in the East Crescent at Arcosanti.
At Cosanti in the early 1980’s, the extensive Soleri Archive
was kept in the East Barrel Vault. Ivan Pintar was in charge of it. The large
cylindrical room was filled with wooden crates containing the original
Plexiglas arcology models built for the Soleri Retrospective at the Corcoran
gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 1970. There were regular office file
cabinets for documents from the Workshop program, flat architectural file
cabinets for all the original silk-screened posters..
I was naturally curious about the contents of the Soleri
Archives but did not realize what their extent was. Ivan had warned us to stay
out of there but I couldn’t help myself; my life at Cosanti and Arcosanti was
my obsession. I went in there and found the file cabinet in which all of the
applications for the Workshop program collected over the years were stored. I
carefully flipped through the files and actually found my original 1975
Arcosanti Workshop application, including my essay written in green ink. I did
not remove it from the drawer; of course; I merely glanced at it, then
carefully closed the file and the drawer.
I was greatly interested in the history of Cosanti. Ivan
Pintar was the real historian there, having lived and worked at Cosanti since
1961. Later, another Cosanti resident and I found a collection of original
“Silt Pile” Workshop posters in the flat file cabinets. There were at least a
few dozen of them. My obsessions were brewing; I needed a souvenir. I carefully
pulled one of the posters from the drawer. I knew this was stealing, but
couldn’t help myself. I thought I might frame the poster someday. A decade
later, at Arcosanti, my obsessive moment would be admitted to and discussed,
but for then, I took the poster to my room in the Cat Cast House where I
carefully stored it in a cardboard tube. I knew the other Cosanti resident had
taken several of them and so I thought I wasn’t so bad, having taken only one.
Towards the end of my Cosanti career, Ivan gave me two Arcosanti Calendars from 1973 and 1974. Ivan told me I shouldn’t
show them to anyone in Cosanti and Arcosanti, that no-one would believe that
Ivan had given them to me and think that I had stolen them. Ivan was right. A
decade later, at Arcosanti, Mary and Tomiaki did not believe that Ivan had
given them to me.
Arcosanti Visits
During my time at Cosanti, we didn’t go up to Arcosanti
much—some of us considered it to be a major inconvenience. (The exception was
Steve Hutton, who hitch-hiked up to Arcosanti every weekend for business and
pleasure.) We did go a few times for events. In January, 1981, Cosanti
residents were invited to Arcosanti by its community to attend a series of
weekend-long community meetings. Steve Hutton and I got a ride to Arcosanti
from Paolo and Colly. That was the only time I ever rode in a car with Paolo at
the wheel. He is a very good driver, but he drives fast.
The first of these meetings were held in the new drafting room
on the ground floor of the Soleri-Office-Drafting unit. The room was empty of
furniture and floored with red tile. The large circular window on the east wall
provides a view of the swimming pool and the valley below. The meeting was led
by Paolo and (the late) Skip Sagar. The focus was community issues at
Arcosanti, including coordination of departments, proper respect for the
harried Camp Kitchen workers, and the concerns and ideas of the Arcosanti
residents. At one point, Skip had to admonish the group that the meeting was
not group therapy.
They decided to hold an afternoon meeting outdoors in the
Foundry Apse, where the warm winter sun had gathered in the Apse. Skip talked
about dramatically increasing bell production; thus, sales. Discussion continued
around construction coordination and some community issues. A shoebox filled
with knit headbands was passed around, donated by a visitor who thought we
needed to keep warm.
In September, 1981, the “Teilhard and Metamorphosis” event was
held at Arcosanti. A small group from Cosanti drove up there for it. A large
Icarus figure, complete with wings, was hung from the Vaults for the event; it
was spectacular. Colorful flags and banners flew everywhere, including one with
a golden Omega holding a yellow sun on a blue field.
During this event, some of us participated in pouring the
first concrete footing for the Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Cloister. A line of
people, headed up by Colly Soleri, passed plastic plates full of concrete from
a small cement mixer parked in the South Vault to the formwork for the
cylindrical footing at the southeast corner of what is now called Colly’s
Garden. Later that day, the plates were washed of concrete and we ate dinner
from them.
Development in Paradise
Valley Around Cosanti
When I first came to Cosanti, it was surrounded by raw desert.
There were a few houses down Doubletree Road, but they were not close to
Cosanti. But in 1978, when we visited Cosanti as part of the Arcosanti Seminar
field trip, the land around Cosanti had just been bulldozed to scrape the
desert vegetation away. We were dismayed at this, and then in the mid-1980’s, a
developer began building large houses around Cosanti. The contractor’s earth
mover started up at 4:30 a.m. It was horribly noisy and spewed fumes into the
Cat Cast back yard. The machine’s vibrations shook the ground and we believed
they shook loose some parts of the old and delicate South Apse.
The developer’s construction contractor built a concrete block
wall around Cosanti, just beyond the Cosanti property. We suspected the wall
actually crossed over into Cosanti’s land in a least one place. One morning, we
had to work as a gang to move a lot of junk and equipment from the east scrap
pile so there would be room for the developer’s wall as well as an access
driveway to reach the east loading dock and the dumpster there. That morning,
one of the contractor’s workers walked through Cosanti into the Antioch
courtyard to complain that the water spigot in Cosanti’s back yard, which they
had been using, had been turned off! I got angry and said “we didn’t ask for
houses, we didn’t ask for a wall!” Ivan told me to shut up. Ivan told the
construction worker that Cosanti was not going to furnish water for them to use
in building the wall. The construction worker was angry. I think they had to
truck in water for their construction of the wall. Eventually there were a
number of million-dollar houses built around Cosanti. One home owner near
Cosanti had a prefabricated underground shelter lowered into place by a crane.
(One of the houses on Invergordon Road near Cosanti was used as a movie set for
the Robert Altman film, O.C. & Stiggs,
inspired by the comedic article of the same name which had appeared in the National Lampoon magazine.)
The Earth Casting
Book
Working in the Cosanti art foundry and Metal Studio began to
wear on me. Although there is a creative element to making Soleri windbells and
there is a certain satisfaction in working with your hands, much of the work in
the foundry is difficult, repetitive manual labor. I was reared to think that I
ought not make my living doing manual labor; that I’m too intellectual for that
and that I simply am not physically or mentally cut out for manual labor. While
I was attending graduate school at Arizona State University, this attitude came
more into focus in my mind and I began to feel that I wanted to do something
else at Cosanti, in the office or architectural and planning studio. So in
1981, I gathered up my courage and approached Colly Soleri to ask whether there
was anything else for me to do. I expressed myself emotionally about this, and
Colly said she would consult with Paolo and then get back to me. This took two
weeks; Colly told me to meet with Paolo in the office for a talk. There Paolo
told me that he had a booklet in mind about the earth and silt casting
technique; he even had a publisher lined up for the book. He seemed very unsure
of me but asked if I was interested in such a project. I accepted. Ivan Pintar
was unhappy at the prospect of my working with Paolo on a book. He said Paolo
was hard to work with and that the Cat Cast House was for foundry workers, not
office workers. But I persevered.
I began the Earth Casting book by writing a synopsis
and a brief outline. I’m not very good at outlines, but this one just burst
from my mind. I wrote it all at once, during a lunch break, before a
preliminary meeting with Paolo, Colly, Ivan, Skip Sagar, and Jeff Stein. They
accepted my outline and Paolo said he wanted to start a “Books Division” of the
Cosanti Foundation. Paolo went on later to write a long memo proposing the
Books Division, outlining several book projects, only one or two of which came
to fruition.
Apparently, Paolo expected me to work on the book part-time in
my room in the evening, unpaid. Paolo and I signed a contract with Mr. Smith,
the publisher. There was a deadline for the completion of a first draft. I took
the contract to a lawyer in Scottsdale to ascertain its legitimacy. The
attorney told me the contract was a personal one, not a corporate one.
But I didn’t want to do it Paolo’s way. I wanted to work on
the book in the Barrel Vault office, full-time, on a daily basis and be paid
for it. My evening hours in my room in the Cat Cast House were occupied with
school work, cable TV and my drug problem so I did not do any work on the book
project for a few months while I worked full-time daily in the art foundry and
time ticked away on the contract deadline. My housemates were naturally curious
and skeptical about my book project; when I told them I was waiting for Paolo
to let me work in the office full-time, they were sure I’d never finish it.
Not working on the book project was irresponsible of me—I
should have at least made some notes. But to me, it was the principle of the
thing. I wanted to work in the office full-time; that was my intent in the
first place. Little did I know how politically explosive this was. Finally, one
day Paolo came into the Foundry where I was shoveling sand and gave me
permission to work on the book full-time in the office.
I was soon about to learn how controversial this project was
among everyone working at Cosanti and Arcosanti. At the time, I didn’t
understand the rather informal organizational structure of the Cosanti
Foundation and how people in charge at Arcosanti can exercise authority at
Cosanti. Roger Tomalty from Arcosanti approached me at Cosanti to say that the Earth
Casting book ought to be happening up at Arcosanti; he said emphatically
that he should be doing the writing. He seemed to think I had “stolen” the
project from him; maybe from his viewpoint I had. But as far as I was
concerned, the Earth Casting book was between Paolo and me. Paolo had asked me
to do it and it hadn’t been my intention to step on anyone’s toes. I wanted to
ask Roger some questions about the Earth Casting book but he wouldn’t
have it. I did ride my motorcycle up to Arcosanti one weekend and talked with
Tony Brown about it, some time after that set-to with Roger, but he just said
those who’d been at Arcosanti for a long time felt they should be doing the EarthCasting
book. I didn’t understand.
For research for the Earth Casting book, Paolo
apparently expected me to go up to the Arcosanti site, gather some silt from
the Agua Fria river bed and then actually do some small-scale silt-casting
there at the Arcosanti site. But this would require the cooperation of others
who weren’t about to cooperate. Even if Paolo had ordered them to cooperate,
they still wouldn’t have been very helpful. So, from Cosanti, I went to various
libraries, including the Arizona State Capitol Library, and found articles
about Paolo’s use of the earth casting technique in ceramics and construction
at Cosanti. Ivan said that I couldn’t write anything by just reading articles,
but I also carefully studied the earth cast concrete structures at Cosanti. My
real intent for the book was to write a history of Cosanti and Arcosanti. The
publisher had told me he wanted a human-interest angle; Paolo wanted a
cut-and–dried earth-casting manual. So, I combined the three ideas by
explaining how to do earth-casting and showing how it had been done at Cosanti
and Arcosanti.
I began writing in the southwest corner of the Barrel Vault
office, using index cards and yellow legal pads. I had a handy reference, How
To Write How-To Books and Articles. This was of definite help in
structuring the book. I had found this book sitting face-out on a shelf at the
back of a bookstore at Paradise Valley Mall. It was as if I was meant to find
it for my writing project. I enlisted the assistance of my architect friend,
Joe Matchey, to draw illustrations for the book.
I did consult with Paolo a little for the writing of the book.
There is a section in the Earth Casting book in which Paolo Soleri’s
Santa Fe Amphitheater is discussed. Paolo related to me a brief story about the
design and construction of this amphitheater; basically a piece of Cosanti
plopped down in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Paolo said that the school the
amphitheater was built for brought in another architect, to work with Paolo on
the project. Paolo likes to work on architecture alone and he didn’t want to
work with this man, but in fact Paolo said his contribution to the design is
mainly the informal element of the flying earth-cast concrete beam above the
stage; the other architect contributed the more formal pillars, stage, and the
steps at the base of the structure.
Then I heard that Ron Bell, an Arcosanti alumnus who worked
for the Xerox Corporation in Scottsdale, was willing to loan a Xerox personal
computer to the Cosanti Foundation if it was going to be used for a specific
project. Cosanti Foundation and Xerox Corporation had a relationship since the
1976 Two Suns Arcology exhibition at Xerox headquarters in Rochester, New York.
Since the loan of the personal computer was on the condition that Cosanti
Foundation did have a specific project to use it for – the EarthCasting book,
Skip Sagar and his partner Langston brought the computer into the Barrel Vault
office and set it up; Langston showed me how to use it. This was very exciting:
in the early 1980s, well before personal computers had become commonplace.
The Xerox 820-II PC had a thick and heavy keyboard module
containing the computer circuitry, a monitor that displayed green characters on
a black screen and a massive disc drive for two eight-inch floppy discs. The
word processing software was Word Star,
one of the first word processing programs for the personal computer. There was
also a dot-matrix printer that looked like a large electric typewriter. It came
with a set of reference charts that listed all the software commands.
I typed my hand-written manuscript into the computer. I knew
what word processing was but had never experienced it before. I wrote this way
for weeks while the Foundry carried on outside the window. Word circulated to
Arcosanti about my using a personal computer for writing the Earth Casting
book at Cosanti. The prevailing attitude was that this should be happening at
Arcosanti. I had thought of Cosanti as the Foundation’s headquarters, but
working in the Arcosanti office in the 1990s, I saw this was not the case, at
least since the mid-1970s.
I will say now that I didn't know what I was doing in writing
the Earth Casting book and I was told by some people that the outcome was not
really satisfactory. The book looks
good, with graphics and photos, but the content leaves a lot to be desired.
However, if that is the case, it was at least in part due to the way the
project was managed.
I had little support for this project within the organization
at Cosanti and Arcosanti. Ivan Pintar, the Foundation’s photographer, refused
to let any of his slides be used in the book. Paolo Soleri himself only
contributed two paragraphs to the writing of a book that has his name on it. No
one in the office or foundry thought I should be working on it at all. I was
yelled at by a Metal Studio worker who accused me of making the foundry staff
feel bad about my changing work situation. Luckily, I was in contact with the
publisher, and upon completion of the first draft, Mr. Smith asked me to submit
it on discs for editing—they had a Xerox computer too! Even so, when the book
was finally published, Paolo did not like it and said I shouldn’t have been the
one to write it! It’s been a solid seller, however, and I attribute the success
of the Earth Casting book at least partially to working closely with the
publisher.
It is true that, at the completion of the book, Mr. Gibbs
Smith and his colleague, Buckley Jepson, came to visit Cosanti to see it, meet
Paolo and me, and to take me out to lunch at a fancy seafood restaurant in
downtown Scottsdale. Mary and Roger thought they should be the ones to be taken
out, but since they’d had little to do with the Earth Casting book, Mr.
Smith decided that only I should go along.
The Shipping Department
One day after I began writing the Earth Casting book,
Paolo and Ivan called a meeting with me in the Pumpkin Apse office. Steve
Boland, who’d been supervising the Shipping Department, was leaving. They asked
me to take over the position and I agreed to do that. It was certainly better
than returning to the Foundry. Taking a job in shipping meant I’d be working
for Cosanti Originals again instead of Cosanti Foundation. It seemed to me that
working for the Foundation has a certain status at Cosanti and Arcosanti:
people who do are doing the real work of the Cosanti Foundation instead of just
cranking out bells.
The shipping department occupies most of the main room in the
Antioch building as well as the next room to the west, where the department’s
supervisor has a desk, telephone and file cabinet. I cleaned out the stuff the
previous supervisor had accumulated, took all the old shelves down and painted
them off-white, over the existing black. I worked hard to improve the
department’s correspondence with Cosanti Original’s outlets and customers, and
to improve all the department’s procedures. There had been an on-going problem
with the delicate ceramic bells; they were constantly being returned, broken in
shipping. The previous staff had been using the old method of packing ceramics,
wrapped in newspaper and double-boxed with excelsior as packing material. When
I consulted with our shipping supply salesman, he clued me into packing all the
ceramic bells with plastic bubble wrap, double-boxed with Styrofoam peanuts.
It took the publisher of the Earth Casting book a few months
to get back to me with edited copy for the book. The publisher returned my
floppy discs and I used them to edit the manuscript. The editor had a lot of
corrections and comments on my writing, which I followed to the letter. When I
needed the Xerox computer once again to edit the text, Ron Bell graciously lent
it to the Foundation once more so I could complete the Earth Casting
book. Paolo said he didn’t understand why I needed a computer to write the
book; he himself wrote by hand. He also told me he wished he hadn’t signed the
contract with the publisher and me. I set up the Xerox PC in my office in the
Antioch building. When the publisher asked me to submit ideas for the layout of
the book, I went to the ASU library and researched book layouts and formats.
The sketches I submitted were closely adhered to by the publisher’s layout
artist.
I had to select photographs to illustrate the book. Since Ivan
Pintar had refused to let us use any of his many slides, Colly and Paolo gave
me a box of loose slides for selection. Some of them had been taken by Colly,
some of them had been taken by Cosanti alumna Annette del Zoppo, who had a
photographic firm in Los Angeles called Environmental Communications. This was
a fun and interesting task. As the Earth Casting book neared completion, I
realized two things: To complete such a project, you have to stick with it past the point where you’re sick and
tired of it. I also realized that instead of explaining the earth casting
technique by showing how it had been done at Cosanti and Arcosanti, I should
have a more direct explanation, with photos of people’s hands and bodies
actually doing earth casting. Paolo was right about that. I also had an idea
for another book—this one you’re reading. I thought, “Some day I’m going to
write a book about this place and I’m going to Tell My All.”
Character Sketch: Colly
Colly Soleri, Paolo’s wife, was the matriarch of Cosanti.
Colly was Vice President of the Cosanti Foundation. She and Ivan Pintar ran
Cosanti, under Paolo and with input from Mary and Roger at Arcosanti. Colly’s
name was a diminutive for Corolyn, a Welsh name. She worked twelve to sixteen
hours a day. Most of the time she was nice to me, and she was always there if
you needed her help. Occasionally Cosanti staff meetings were called and Colly
facilitated them. Colly had set things up for Paolo so that all he had to worry
about was what was on his desk or drafting table. Colly didn’t go up to
Arcosanti much, mostly for lack of time, but she did attend some community
meetings or events there.
People always expected Colly to be there every day. But then
one day she wasn’t there. She was sick, and Colly never got sick. Then Colly
did not come to work for weeks; and then, never again. We learned that she had
abdominal cancer. Then one day in February 1982, we were informed that Colly
had died. Everyone at Cosanti and Arcosanti was sad, shocked and
grief-stricken. Paolo wasn’t working for a while after that. Old friends of the
Soleri family came to help.
The day after Colly died, the family placed her body in a
plywood coffin Paolo had made. She was to be buried on the Arcosanti property,
across the river from Camp. From the Cat Cast House back door window, I witnessed
the Soleri family lifting Colly’s sheet-wrapped body into the coffin, on the
back porch of the Soleri house. Then, a few hours later, they placed the coffin
in the bed of Mike McCleve’s pickup truck and left for Arcosanti. Most of the
people of Cosanti were at the entranceway for the final Good-Bye. I was not
present because I didn’t know when it would take place; I was in the Cat Cast
House. I later learned that everyone waved Good-Bye and Paolo was despondent. I
was told later that the timing of the last Good-Bye had been deliberately kept
from me.
The Sunday following Colly’s death, a service was held for her
at Cosanti, in front of the North Studio. Someone had brought strings of
multicolored origami birds to hang in the trees around the entranceway. Cosanti
was closed for the day. There was a small invited crowd in attendance. Paolo
had asked a male opera singer he knew to sing a dirge at the service. For some
of the young people, including me, it was too much. I regret that some of us
retreated to the Cat Cast House in the middle of the service. Colly’s death
left a big vacuum, a grand canyon of a hole where she had been. Paolo was never
the same again.
My Final Days at
Cosanti
After completing the Earth Casting book, I returned the
Xerox personal computer to Ron Bell over at the Xerox Corporation. Then someone
donated a Tandy TRS-80 PC to the shipping department at Cosanti. It came with a
table made especially for it. I planned to use the TRS-80 PC to write
correspondence and make forms for the shipping department, but Ivan would have
none of it. He told me to give the TRS-80 computer to Arcosanti. It turned out
later the people at Arcosanti didn’t know what to do with it so they just threw
it away.
Cosanti Original’s major customer in the mid-1980s was called
The Nature Company, which had stores in malls across the country and stocked
the Soleri windbells, displaying them prominently in their shop windows. Nature
Company orders were usually dealt with over the telephone, rather than in
writing as all the other outlets did. It eventually became evident that this
made it possible to make major mistakes in their orders. Once, instead of their
usual order for #118-P windbells (a #118 bell suspended from a “rib-cage
plate,” basically a set of S-links attached to their casting spine), the buyer
specifically ordered a batch of #118-B windbells (a #118 bell hung from tapered
bars, wired together). I was surprised at this order, since it varied from
their usual routine. I asked the buyer to repeat the order. Ivan and Foundry
foreman Bob Call were as surprised as I was at the change. I was positive that
the woman had said “B” not “P.”
The Cosanti Foundry went ahead and produced 25 #118-B Soleri
windbells. This was a lot of time-consuming work, since they had to cast the
bars as well as the bells and then painstakingly assemble each piece. The
#118-B bells were also hard to pack for shipping. The shipping department
shipped the order. Then, a week later, the entire shipment was returned. The
people at the Nature Company said they had asked for #118-P bells, not #118-B
bells. Ivan was angry that the order had been rejected and blamed me. This was
understandable. The foundry crew was angry with me, as were the accountants in
the office. Paolo came by the shipping department to tell me that I had better
pay better attention to the orders. I was confused, saddened, and ashamed.
Nobody at Cosanti took me seriously anymore. This, alas, was the beginning of
the end for me at Cosanti.
By this time, my time at Cosanti was stretching into five
years. I had thought about leaving several times but that would mean losing my
job and my housing simultaneously. As a top graduate student at ASU, I’d been
invited to be an Aide in the State Senate but I had foolishly declined this
invitation because it would mean leaving Cosanti and making a change in my
lifestyle. But I am pretty sure I’m not the only person who has stayed on and
on at Cosanti/Arcosanti because of not being able to get it together to leave.
In my fourth year at ASU, the chairperson of the Planning
Department offered me a scholarship for fall Semester, 1984. This was initially
exciting because I had always dreamed of a scholarship. Ivan said people who
work in the shipping department don’t have scholarships and I still don’t know
what that meant, but in the fall of 1984, while everyone else in the shipping
department was doing their job, I sat in my office and read textbooks from
school.
One day in early October, 1984, while I was in my office
reading a textbook, Ivan came into the shipping department and told me to get
into the main room. He asked me about one of the bell orders, which I had to admit
I hadn’t even seen. When I didn’t answer promptly, he said I was being
suspended for a week. I was shocked! Ivan walked away and I went into the
office again. Ivan came back, and, seeing me there, told me to “Go away!”
I went up into the Cat Cast House. I was very upset and
crying. I felt that my career with Cosanti was over. I went into my room,
rolled myself a joint and proceeded to get high—this was a major problem for
me. Everyone at Cosanti knew that I smoked marijuana and I certainly wasn’t the
only one who did this. But they didn’t necessarily like me doing it. It was
part of my Cosanti lifestyle and I was an addict. I had been excluded from
Colly’s final Good-Bye because of it. People didn’t take me seriously because
of it. I am sure it was why the office staff didn’t want me working next to
them and why I got no support for the Earth Casting book. I cried and
cried over being suspended. My house mate Dave Koppe came into the house and
asked me what had happened. I was incoherent but I did manage to get out, “Tell
Ivan: ‘I Quit!’”
I didn’t know what to do. I knew that in this state I couldn’t
do my schoolwork very well. I sat in my room and thought for a few days. I
thought that I had to drop out of school. I don’t know why I thought that, much
less why I acted upon that thought; in retrospect, it was the wrong thing to
do. I drove down to ASU and went around to all my professors to tell them that
something had happened at Cosanti and I had to drop out. I was very upset and
they could see this. I was dropping a scholarship, a major academic crime. Ivan
was unhappy that I had dropped out of school even though he had spoken
disparagingly to me about my scholarship. I later learned that one of my
professors, the late Dr. Jeffrey Cook, who was an associate of the Cosanti
Foundation, had called Ivan to ask what exactly had happened. Ivan said it was
embarrassing.
I sat and stewed for weeks. I ran out of money and decided I
would work at Cosanti until Christmas, then go back to Cincinnati to stay with
my parents for several weeks (my wonderful parents agreed to take over the
payments on my car, as well). Then, I would come back to Arizona and live on
the ASU campus to finish my Master’s degree. When I told Ivan and Bob Call
this, Paolo went around Cosanti and asked everyone if they minded my coming
back to work for while. Everyone agreed. Since I had quit, Ivan had made my
co-worker the new shipping department supervisor. So now I was just a regular
worker in the department, specializing in packing ceramic bells. I was very
emotional about leaving Cosanti, and it seemed to affect my health. During my
last months at Cosanti, I was sick a few times. Although I was handicapped and
sickly as a child, as an adult I rarely got sick. Yet in a period of three months,
I contracted stomach flu, pleurisy and prostatitus.
I stored most of my belongings in a storage locker in north
Scottsdale, but as it got close to the time I was to leave, I asked if I could
leave my car at Cosanti while I was in Cincinnati. I realize now what a gross
imposition this was; it turned out that the length of time I was gone was much
longer than I had anticipated.
